Performance Analysis and Comparison of H.264 based on JM and FFMPEG Softwares Guided by Dr K.R.Rao By Kiran Jonnavittula

What Exactly Is 'Codec'? "Codec" is a technical name for "coder/decoder". It also stands for "compressor/decompressor“. It is a computer program(realized on a hardware and software) that both shrinks large movie files, and makes them playable on computer/ devices. Codec programs are required for the media player to play audio/video files.

Why codecs? Because video and music files are large, they become difficult to transfer across the Internet quickly. To help speed up downloads, mathematical "codecs" were built to encode ("shrink") a signal for transmission and then decode it for viewing or editing, and also for storage purposes. A video codec is a device or software that enables video compression and/or decompression for digital video.

Complexity of a codec is decided by factors such as the quantity of the data needed to represent it (also known as the bit rate). the complexity of the encoding and decoding algorithms. robustness to data losses and errors, ease of editing. the state of the art of compression algorithm design and end-to-end delay

Introduction of H.264 [8] H.264/MPEG-4 Part 10 or AVC (Advanced Video Coding) is a standard for video compression[4]. Purpose of H.264: – Higher coding efficiency than previous standards, MPEG-1,2,4 part 2, H.261, H.263[4]. – Simple syntax specifications. – Various applications like video broadcasting, video streaming, video conferencing, D-Cinema, HDTV – Balance between coding efficiency, implementation complexity and cost - based on state-of the-art in VLSI design technology.

H.264 block coding structure Encoder Fig1: H.264 macro block coding [4]

Decoder Motion Compensation Entropy Decoding Intra Prediction Intra/Inter Mode Selection Inverse Quantization & Inverse Transform Deblocking Filter + + Bitstream Input Video Output Picture Buffering Fig2: H.264 decoder block [4]

Profiles of H.264 Fig3: H.264 profiles [4]

Specific coding schemes of profiles Fig4: H.264 coding profile schemes [4]

Cif and Qcif sequences CIF (Common International Format), also known as FCIF (Full Common Intermediate Format), is a format used to standardize the horizontal and vertical resolutions in pixels of YCbCr sequences in video signals, commonly used in video teleconferencing systems. QCIF means "Quarter CIF". To have one fourth of the area as "quarter" implies the height and width of the frame are halved. The differences in Y, Cb and Cr of cif and qcif are as shown below in figure 4a.[16] Figure 4a: 4:2:0 format of cif and qcif.

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC codecs x264: A GPL-licensed implementation of the H.264 video standard. x264 is only an encoder[6] Nero Digital: Commercial MPEG-4 ASP and AVC codecs developed by Nero AG.[3] QuickTime H.264: H.264 implementation released by Apple.[3] DivX Pro Codec: An H.264 decoder and encoder was added in version 7.[3] JM software FFMpeg

FFMPEG Fast Forwarding Mpeg. Ffmpeg FFmpeg is a free software / open source project that produces libraries and programs for handling multimedia data. The most notable parts of FFmpeg are libavcodec, an audio/video codec library used by several other projects, libavformat, an audio/video container mux and demux library, and the ffmpeg command line program for transcoding multimedia files Download the source code, link the files, build and get the required excecutable. [1]

FFMPEG syntax ffmpeg [[infile options][`-i' infile]]... {[outfile options] outfile} Default Profile: Main Profile Figure 5 : Command prompt of FFMPEG.

JM Software Current software version 17.2 Modify.config file based on each Profile:  encoder_baseline.cfg  encoder.cfg  encoder_main.cfg  encoder_extended.cfg [3]

JM commands Access “lencode.exe” and appropriate config file. Change the config file parameters such as quantization parameter, number of frames to be encoded etc. Figure 6 : Command prompt of JM software.

FFMPEG Calculations For Akiyo_Qcif Table1: Akiyo_Qcif calculations using ffmpeg. Quantization parameter Encoding Time(seconds)PSNR(dB)SSIMBit Rates (kbps) Compression Ratio Decoding Time(seconds)

JM Software Calculations for Akiyo_Qcif Table2: Akiyo_Qcif calculations using JM software. Quantization parameter Encoding Time(seconds)PSNR(dB)SSIM Bit Rates (Kbps) Compressio n Ratio Decoding Time(seconds)

FFMPEG Calculations for Bus_Cif Table3: Bus_cif calculations using ffmpeg. Quantization parameter Encoding Time(seconds)PSNR (Y)SSIM Bit Rates (kbps) Compression Ratio Decoding Time(seconds)

JM Calculations for Bus_Cif Table4: Bus_cif calculations using JM software. Quantization parameter Encoding Time(seconds) PSNR (Y)SSIM Bit Rates (Kbps) Compression Ratio Decoding Time(seconds)

File Name: Bus_cif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure7 : Plot of quantization parameter versus PSNR for bus_cif sequence.

File Name: Bus_cif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure8 : Plot of quantization parameter versus SSIM for bus_cif sequence.

File Name: Bus_cif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure9 : Plot of quantization parameter versus bit rate for bus_cif sequence.

File Name: Bus_cif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure10 : Plot of quantization parameter versus encoding time for bus_cif sequence.

File Name: Bus_cif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure11 : Plot of quantization parameter versus compression ratio for bus_cif sequence.

File Name: Bus_cif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure12 : Plot of quantization parameter versus decoding time for bus_cif sequence.

File Name: Akiyo_qcif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure13 : Plot of quantization parameter versus PSNR for Akiyo_qcif sequence.

File Name: Akiyo_qcif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure14 : Plot of quantization parameter versus SSIM for Akiyo_qcif sequence.

File Name: Akiyo_qcif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure15 : Plot of quantization parameter versus bit rates for Akiyo_qcif sequence.

File Name: Akiyo_qcif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure16 : Plot of quantization parameter versus compression ratio for Akiyo_qcif sequence.

File Name: Akiyo_qcif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure17 : Plot of quantization parameter versus encoding time for Akiyo_qcif sequence.

File Name: Akiyo_qcif.yuv Number of Frames : 60 Figure18 : Plot of quantization parameter versus decoding time for Akiyo_qcif sequence.

Focus and progress of Project Performance Analysis and Comparison of H.264 on JM and FFMPEG Softwares. Encoding time Bit Rates. Compression ratio. PSNR(peak-peak Signal to Noise Ratio). SSIM(structural similarity Index metric)-for ffmpeg. Decoding time.

Conclusion Parameter AnalyzedQcifCif Encoding time.FFMPEG offers faster encoding time than JM software. Bit rates.FFMPEG offers lower bit rates than JM software. Compression ratio.FFMPEG offers higher compression ratio. FFMPEG offers higher compression ratio at lower QP. PSNR.JM offers better PSNR than FFMPEG JM offers better PSNR than FFMPEG. SSIM.FFMPEG offers better SSIM that JM. Decoding Time.FFMPEG offers faster decoding time than JM software. Table5: Conclusion and analysis.

Conclusion of H.264 benchmarks JM Reference Codec Is the official reference encoder and decoder of the H.264/AVC standardization bodies. It implements all the features of the standard (all profiles and levels), but it is designed for describing and verifying the standard, and it exhibits very low performance. It is not recommended for computer architecture or compiler evaluations. [14]

Conclusion of H.264 benchmarks FFmpeg H.264 decoder Includes a H.264/AVC encoder-decoder that implements most of the features of the main and high profiles of the standard. The code is very optimized and include MMX/SSE and Altivec SIMD instructions for the most time consuming kernels. It is widely used in free multimedia players like MPlayer, VideoLAN, Xine and others. [14]

References FFMPEG source code FFMPEG commands documentation JM software source codehttp://iphome.hhi.de/suehring/tml/ 4. – developers guide. 5.D. Marpe, T. Wiegand and G. J. Sullivan, “The H.264/MPEG-4 AVC standard and its applications”, IEEE Communications Magazine, vol. 44, pp , Aug Joint Video Team (JVT) of ISO/IEC MPEG & ITU-T VCEG (ISO/IEC JTC1/SC29/WG11 and ITU-T SG16 Q.6), 16th Meeting: Poznan, Poland, July, Soon-kak Kwon, A. Tamhankar and K.R. Rao ‖Overview of H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10‖, J. Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 17, pp , April The H.264 Advanced Video Compression Standard, Iain E. Richardson, Wiley publications, Second Edition, Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 9.T. Wiegand, et al “Overview of the H.264/AVC video coding standard”, IEEE Trans. on circuits and systems for video technology, vol. 13, pp , July P. N. Tudor, “MPEG-2 video compression”, Electronics \& communication engineering journal, vol. 7, pp , K. V. S. Swaroop, and K. R Rao, “Performance Analysis and Comparison of JM 15.1 and Intel IPP H.264 Encoder and Decoder”, IEEE nd Southeastern Symposium on System Theory (SSST), pp , G. Sullivan, et al “The H.264/AVC Advanced Video Coding Standard: Overview and Introduction to the Fidelity Range Extensions”. Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering, vol. 5558, pp , Applications of Digital Image Processing XXVII, Video Sequences : H.264 benchmarks summarization and their applications SSIM reference. 16.S.Kwon, A. Tamhankar and K.R. Rao, “Overview of H.264 / MPEG-4 Part 10”, J. Visual Communication and Image Representation, vol. 17, pp , April 2006.